What Remains True

by Thomas, Janis

  When he was alive, his expressions ranged from content to joyful to puzzled to curious to intently focused, like when he found an interesting bug in the yard or discovered animal shapes in the clouds. He was a bright, precocious, happy child, engaged with the world around him.

  But this Jonah, this phantom who might or might not really be sitting at the head of my bed, looks worried. I want to tell him not to, don’t worry, everything’s okay, because a five-year-old shouldn’t ever wear that expression. But I can’t, because everything is not okay, everything is awful, terrible, horrible, unbearable without him.

  The image of my son begins to shift, to quiver, to fade even more, and I cry out, “Jonah!” He touches his nose and grins, and my tears are sudden and fierce.

  When he was four and contracted strep throat and couldn’t speak without immeasurable pain, he and I came up with signals, a kind of sign language. If he needed something, he would pantomime it, but if he was fine, in need of nothing, he would touch the tip of his index finger to the end of his nose. It became a thing for us, a secret communication between us to let the other know we were just fine.

  I want to be able to touch my nose for him, but again, I can’t. I’m seeing my dead son. That in and of itself is a pretty big indication that I’m not just fine.

  An instant later, Jonah is gone. I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them, but all I see is the wooden headboard and the disheveled pillow on which I sleep.

  A memory blooms in my mind from two years ago. My mother had just passed, the cancer quickly and efficiently taking her. My grief was tempered by all of the bureaucracy and business dying creates, the endless forms and phone calls and arrangements that needed to be taken care of. I was sitting at the kitchen table, a completed life insurance form and my cell phone in front of me. Jonah, three at the time, wandered into the kitchen and climbed into my lap.

  “Are you sad, Mommy?” he asked, and I nodded my head. I was sad and tired and overwhelmed. “Are you sad about Nanny?”

  “Yes, honey. I am.”

  Jonah didn’t know what death meant. No child does.

  “Nanny went away,” he said solemnly.

  “Yes, she did.”

  “But where did she go?”

  I took a deep breath. “She went to heaven, baby.”

  “Where’s heaven?” he asked. “Is it far away? Can we go see her there?”

  “It’s very far away. And we can’t see her again except in our dreams.” I had just had a very vivid dream the night before in which my mom had hugged me and told me she was “feeling all better now.”

  “But heaven is a wonderful place, Jonah. Beautiful, with angels all around. Nanny’s happy there, so even though we can’t see her, we know she’s safe and happy and looking down on us with love.”

  “Does everybody go to heaven?” He shifted in my lap so that he could see me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, opting for honesty.

  “Will I go to heaven?” he asked, still searching my face.

  “Yes, honey. You will definitely go to heaven. But not for a very, very long time.”

  He turned to face the table and leaned back against me. His dark curls were getting long, and I absently thought he was due for a haircut and wondered if we could fit one in before my mother’s funeral.

  “I can’t wait to see Nanny again,” he said softly, and I slipped my arms around his middle and held him close, rocking him back and forth until both of us were nearly asleep.

  I glance at the bottle of pills on the nightstand and wonder why I’m seeing my son since I only took one pill. And then it hits me.

  Why is he here? Why isn’t he in heaven? My brain can’t make sense of these questions. Jonah was the sweetest, most wonderful boy in the world. Why haven’t God or the angels snatched him up and taken him to his kingdom, where my mom could lavish him with her bounteous love?

  Maybe he’s stuck here. My heart starts to race at the thought. Maybe he can’t find his way. Maybe the angels are urging him on, but he can’t hear them. I have to help him. I have to help him find his way to heaven. It’s my responsibility as his mother. He deserves heaven, and I have to get him there.

  I reach for the bottle of pills.

  TWENTY-THREE

  RUTH

  I awake with a start, disoriented, not knowing where I am. Darkness has fallen, and the room is full of shadows. The living room. My living room. The digital clock on the cable box reads half past six. I’ve been asleep for more than two hours.

  I jump up from the couch, relieved that my muscles are obeying the commands from my brain without much protest, but my relief is tempered by my guilt. Guilt that I have left my sister’s family alone for so long. Rachel is a mess, Sam is incapable of dealing with her, and Eden, God bless her, needs the stability of my presence, whether she knows it or not.

  As I half jog to the kitchen and grab my pills, a seed of worry sprouts in my gut. I don’t know the root of this sudden apprehension. I am not superstitious, nor do I believe in telepathy, and even if I did, I’m far too common a woman to possess such a power. But this feeling, this sudden fear, compels me to hurry, to quicken my pace, despite the fact that my legs are not equipped to handle such velocity.

  I grab a carry sack from the cupboard and bring it with me to the bedroom. I pull fresh underthings from the drawers and clean clothes from the closet and stuff them into the bag. I go into the cramped bathroom and relieve my bladder, and when I wash my hands, I am careful not to look in the mirror, because I am afraid of the image I will see.

  Five minutes later, after making sure all of my appliances are off, even though I didn’t use them during my brief visit, my Nissan shudders to life. I try to be grateful for what I have rather than bemoan what I don’t have, but sometimes I resent the fact that Charlie got the Porsche. Especially since he bought his new wife a Land Rover. But the Nissan works, and how ridiculous would it be for a middle-aged woman with gray hair and sagging breasts and plump, useless breeder’s hips to drive a sports car?

  Worry gnaws at me, but I drive at the speed limit and stop appropriately for questionable yellow lights.

  It won’t help my sister if I get into an accident.

  As I ease onto the freeway, I think about Rachel, the Rachel before Eden and Jonah, the Rachel before Sam. The girl I helped to raise.

  Our mom was a good mother. But after Dad died, she had to support us on her own, and when she went back to work, I had to pick up the slack of caretaking. Rachel was impetuous; she was the baby and got away with anything because she could charm my mother out of her anger. In truth, she could charm me as well, but I took the role of stand-in parent seriously and used any opportunity that came up to teach my sister important lessons about life. She looked up to me and resented me at the same time. She made fun of me because I chose to study instead of going out with boys and because I eschewed drinking even when Mom was gone for the night and would never catch me. Rachel would sneak the Kahlúa out of the cabinet, pouring water in the bottle to make up for what she drank. I would threaten to tell Mom, but I never did. Instead, I would watch her closely and make her drink water and give her aspirin and, finally, drape a blanket across her when she passed out on the couch.

  She never thanked me, never made any noises of appreciation. Not until later, not until after that boy.

  His name was Casey Holdaway. He was a beautiful bum. He looked like Brad Pitt, and he was affable and funny and as ambitious as a sloth. I might have had a slight crush on him even though he was two years younger than me and totally focused on getting into my sister’s Calvin Kleins. I don’t think he even knew my name, but he recognized me as a possible ally and so he joked with me and maybe even flirted with me in order to get closer to her. And although I admit to the occasional fantasy about him, I recognized him for what he was. I warned Rachel off him, but she mistook my ministrations for jealousy and careened headlong into his arms.

  She came to me, one night, when Mom was on the late shi
ft, crying, her mascara halfway down her face. She’d been at a party, and Casey had been on the arm of another girl, a slut called Amber, and they’d been making out in front of everyone. I told her not to worry, that she was better off without him, that she would be fine, but she’d sobbed and sobbed and then she threw up, right there on my bed, and I knew, before she even told me, she was pregnant.

  I took care of her. There was no other choice. I could have betrayed her to my mom, but that would have led to misery for everyone. And she was so brokenhearted, so small and afraid and alone, and she needed a champion. I had always been that for her, even if she didn’t recognize that fact. So I lied to our mother, and I took her to the clinic, and I cared for her afterward, and I went to Casey Holdaway’s house a week after the abortion and I shattered his windshield with my father’s sledgehammer that had been lying dormant in our garage since his death.

  And Rachel, still recovering and pleading the flu to our mother, took my hand and pulled me to her side and thanked me, tearfully, her emotions uncontained. She told me I was the best sister ever and she would always be grateful to me, indebted to me, and that she loved me.

  I’ve held that memory since she was fifteen. It has kept me from hating her in her moments of complete self-absorption. It has kept me at the ready to validate her praise.

  I reach the turnoff for Rachel’s neighborhood. The seed of worry has blossomed into absolute terror. Something is wrong, I know. I have no hands-free device, but I reach for my cell phone anyway. I call Rachel’s cell, knowing she won’t answer because it lies unused in its charger downstairs. I hang up and call Sam’s cell phone. He doesn’t answer, either. I call the house phone, but the call goes immediately to voice mail, which is no surprise since I helped them change the setting when they were overwhelmed by all of the phone calls from friends and relatives.

  I put my foot on the accelerator, exceeding the speed limit, then have to brake suddenly at a crosswalk that lights up seemingly by magic. I idle, looking at both sides of the street, trying to find the pedestrian responsible for this unwanted delay. There is no one. I curse softly, then press down on the accelerator.

  Three minutes, I think. I try to counsel myself. I tell myself that my worry is unfounded. All is well. If it weren’t, surely I would have heard from Sam. All is well. All is well. As well as it can be, considering the fact that Jonah is dead.

  I reach the familiar tract of houses and make the turn onto Rachel’s street. When I pull to the curb in front of my sister’s house, I take a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. I don’t know what I expected to find, but there is nothing out of the ordinary. Lights blaze from inside, and I can see the flickering light from the television in the living room. There are no fire engines or paramedics, no curious neighbors—all is as it should be. I grab my bag from the passenger seat and get out of the car.

  I approach the front door. I think back to when I arrived earlier this afternoon, when Rachel was screaming. She is not screaming now. All is quiet. Slowly my pulse returns to normal.

  Shadow starts to bark.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SHADOW

  Something is wrong. I can smell it from where I lie. I raise my head and sniff the air. The smell is coming from upstairs, from my mistress. I raise my ears to listen for sounds from my mistress, but the screen on the wall is alive and very loud.

  My master and Little Female are sitting on the couch, their faces turned toward the screen, watching flat humans behave strangely. Sometimes, my master and Little Female laugh at the flat humans, and the sound pleases me, because I haven’t heard them laugh in a very long time. There are plates on the chewed-leg table with food that Dark Female made. I know because I smell her on the bread.

  I have been sitting on my couch-room bed, not lying down, but sitting up watching my master and Little Female eat, waiting for one of them to drop something on the floor or give me a taste. I’m not hungry because my master remembered to feed me, but I can always eat, especially if it’s human food.

  But now, the smell from upstairs draws my attention, pulling me away from my master and Little Female and their food. I creep away from the couch and move to the stairs. My master doesn’t notice and neither does Little Female.

  Most smells make me happy, even the ones that make my humans hold their noses and frown and cry out while waving their hands back and forth in front of their faces. But this is not a happy-making kind of smell. This smell makes me afraid, makes my ears flat and my tail curl down between my back legs.

  I know I’m not supposed to go up there, even though I went up before and my master didn’t give me angry eyes. I’m still not supposed to go. I don’t know what to do, so I lie down on the cool floor right by the bottom step and listen for my mistress’s call.

  Little Female rises from the couch and walks toward me. She pats my head and says, “Good Shadow.” She speaks a few words and then tells me stay. I know that word. Right now, with the afraid smell, I don’t like the word stay. I make a small whining noise in my throat, but Little Female is already up the stairs and down the hall. She didn’t stop at my mistress’s door, but then Little Female has a human nose, not a dog nose. I hear the door to Little Female’s room creak closed.

  The afraid smell is worse. I can’t stay, even if Little Female told me to. I have go.

  I stand up, then put my paw on the first stair. I take a step up, then another, feeling a little bit like a Bad Boy but not being able to stop myself because I sense that my mistress is in distress. The smell gets stronger with each step I take until there is only the smell, nothing else, not my master or Little Female or there-and-not-there Little Male. The fur on my neck rises all by itself, and I am afraid, but I am a Good Boy and a Brave Boy, so I keep going even if I don’t want to.

  Up I go until I’m at the very top of the stairs. I move to the door on the right side. My mistress is on the other side of this door. Her smell seeps under the crack. I make the whining noise again and scratch at the door, and it opens just a little bit, but I don’t see my mistress or hear her, either.

  The smell is burning the inside of my nose and my head and I don’t want to get any closer to that smell because it hurts, but I have to because I am a Good Boy and I know my mistress needs me, even if she isn’t calling me like she usually does when she wants me to come.

  I let out a single bark, but my mistress doesn’t answer. My master and Little Female don’t hear me. I lift my forepaw and press it against the door, and the door opens enough for me to walk in.

  It’s dark inside this room, but I don’t need light to get to my mistress. Her scent, underneath that smell, leads me to her. I pad around the side of the bed and see her. She lies on her side with one arm flung out, the hand at the end of it touching the table beside her, where a plastic bottle sits open. I know what open and closed is, because open means I can reach my head into the container of food and grab some, and closed means I can’t. Her eyes are open, but I can tell that she is not seeing anything. Her breathing isn’t right—she makes gurgling sounds and her chest rises and falls rapidly, in short bursts like it hurts to breathe, and the afraid smell is coming out of her mouth.

  I make the whining sound and push my head under her hand. Her hand flops off me. I chuff at her, but she doesn’t move. Her breathing changes again—she’s wheezing and choking and I can tell that the smell is death.

  I start to bark. And bark. And bark. And I don’t stop.

  I hear Dark Female rush into the house downstairs and make shouting noises at my master. My master and Dark Female come into this room, and my master grabs my mistress and shakes her, shouts at her, rocks her, while Dark Female talks into her metal toy. Little Female stands at the open door, her eyes very big and round, until Dark Female grabs her arm and drags her to her room. I hear the sirens in my ears. Then the squeal-whine of tires. I’m still barking as the heavy tread of footsteps sounds on the stairs, as strangers push on my mistress’s chest and put something in her mouth and pie
rce her arm with the sharp end of a long tube.

  Dark Female shushes me and scolds me with her angry eyes and angry face, but I stay in the room, barking, until the strangers lift my mistress onto a long table with no chewed legs and carry her from the house.

  I follow my master to Little Female’s room and see him put his arms around her and hold her, then take her hand and lead her to the hallway. Her eyes are crying, but she pats my head, and I feel better that she knows I’m there.

  I follow my master and Little Female downstairs, where they meet Dark Female. Her face is angry, but her body is angry all over, too. I feel it coming out of her. Big sad plus big angry. She looks at Little Female but not at my master. The humans go to the front door and outside and I want to go with them, I want to not be alone here, but I know they won’t let me come.

  The smell is smaller now, but still here. I go to the food-smelling room and walk to the farthest corner, as far away from the smell as I can. I lie down and put my head on my front paws. I look at my bed. It would be nice if my bed were over where I am. But I’m not going to go to my bed until the smell is even smaller.

  And then I see Little Male. He comes into my sight, and my tail starts to wag. But when he is all the way there and I see his face, my tail stops wagging. Because he is not smiling. His face is not wet, but I can tell he is crying.

  And then he is gone.

  PART TWO: A DAY OF COUNSELING

  Therapist Journal: 5/15/17

  Patient: Rachel Glass-Davenport, age 36

  Referral: Archibald Deever, MD, PhD

  My initial meeting with Rachel Glass-Davenport (from here on to be referred to as RGD) took place at Mercy Hospital on May 15, 2017, at three thirty in the afternoon. Her husband, Samuel Davenport, and her sister, Ruth Glass, were present for introductions and provided background information. Her physician, Elizabeth Hamill, MD, as well as the attending psych resident, James Lahey, MD, discussed her case and went over her chart with me.